The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may or may not constitute prior art.
A gear selection assembly includes a shifting lever that is actuated to select a desired gear selector position such as Park, Reverse, Neutral, or Drive. In a drive-by-wire system, the position of the shifting lever is converted into an electronic signal, and the electrical signal is communicated to the transmission by an internal mode switch. The internal mode switch module includes a detent lever having a plurality of detents, where each detent corresponds to a gear selector position. Magnetic field sensors such as Hall effect sensors can be used to detect the position of the detent lever. In one example, the Hall sensors are the three-lead type, where a first lead serves as a connection to ground, a second lead is connected to a voltage supply, and a third lead carries an output voltage. In this approach, a first set of Hall sensors communicate with one of the control modules, and a second set of Hall sensors communicate with the other control module. One of the Hall sensors from the first set of sensors and the second set of sensors are associated with each detent of the detent lever, which means that two different Hall sensors are used to monitor each detent of the detent lever.
The signals from the first set and the second set of Hall sensors are compared against one other in an effort to determine if each set of sensors are sending an accurate signal. However, this approach is redundant, as multiple control modules are needed to process the signals from the Hall sensors. Moreover, this approach can also be costly, as there are typically numerous Hall sensors used to determine the position of the shifting lever. In one example, nine different Hall sensors are needed in a gear selector assembly having five different gear lever positions (i.e., Park, Neutral, Reverse, Drive and Low gear).
While gear shifter assemblies achieve their intended purpose, there is a need for a new and improved gear shifter assembly which exhibits improved performance from the standpoint of reducing the number of magnetic field sensors used and processor redundancy.